Noise levels Noise levels were measured with an Extech 407727 Digital Sound Level meter 1" from the side of the drives at idle and under an HD Tach seek load. Drives were run with the PCB facing up.

Since the IDE Flash drive has no moving parts, it's essentially silent. However, we've still included noise level results to illustrate the drive's impact on overall system noise.

The IDE Flash drive's silent design shaves a few decibels off our system's noise levels. That's not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but the IDE Flash drive's utter silence could have a much bigger impact on systems designed specifically for quiet operation.

Power consumption For our power consumption tests, we measured the voltage drop across a 0.1-ohm resistor placed in-line with the 5 V and 12 V lines connected to each drive. Through the magic of Ohm's Law, we were able to calculate the power draw from each voltage rail and add them together for the total power draw of the drive.

This is why flash memory is making its way into hybrid mobile hard drive designs. Even with 8 GB of storage, the IDE Flash drive barely sips power when compared with traditional ATA drives.